Charles Gabriel Seligman, a renowned ethnologist, was born in London, England on December 24, 1873 and died at Oxford on September 19, 1940. He was the only child of Hermann Seligmann and Olivia Mendez da Costa.
Seligman was accepted on a scholarship to study medicine at St. Thomas Hospital, earning his first medical qualification in 1896 at the age of 23 when he also received the Bristowe medal in pathology. In 1898 he joined an expedition from Cambridge University to the Torres Strait. The experience prompted him to continue his efforts in the field of anthropology, and he made further trips: New Guinea—1904, Ceylon—1906 to 1908, Sudan—1909 to 1912 and 1921 to 1922. Seligman was appointed to the chair of Ethnology at the University of London from 1913 to 1934. From 1923 to 1925 he was president of the Royal Anthropology Institute and he was a visiting professor at Yale University in 1938.
Seligman married Brenda Z. Salaman in 1905. She was to accompany him on all of his later expeditions, and Seligman gave her a great deal of credit for the documentation and literary quality of his published works. These works are considered by other experts in the field to be basic sources for information:
Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910)
The Veddas (1911)
Races of Africa (1930)
The Pagan Tribes of Nilotic Sudan (1932)
Seligman received a great deal of recognition for his work as well as multiple awards. Perhaps the highest accolade he received was in the publisher’s note of his work Races of Africa. “It is an index of his scholarship and expertise in all fields of anthropology that what he could do almost single-handed has now required the collaboration of many.”
Works Cited
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9066681?query=charles%20seligman&ct= 21 June 2000
L. G. Wickham Legg, ed., Dictionary of National Biography 1931-1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1950)
C. G. Seligman, Races of Africa, 4th ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966)
Written by Norman Fastenau